Church Council

Sex and violence on television foment "antisocial and aggressive behavior" that seriously threatens the quality of American life, an investigation by the National Council of Churches concluded today. A special committee of the interdenominational group recommended that the federal government act to protect the public from what it called "moral pollution" from a dominant influence in modern society.

Taking a page from President Obama's political playbook, Michele Bachmann has formally left a church in Minnesota accused of holding anti-Catholic views. According to CNN , the church that Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus had attended for more than a decade, Salem Lutheran in Stillwater, Minn., granted the couple's request to be released from their membership last month, a week after Bachmann told a national audience that she would run for the Republican presidential nomination.

The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell is the new executive director of the World Council of Churches' U.S. office in New York, the first woman in a succession of seven church leaders to hold the post. Chosen by the council's general secretary, the Rev. Emilio Castro, and confirmed by the council's central committee, Campbell is a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She previously had been an officer of the National Council of Churches.

The nation's two largest ecumenical organizations are positioning themselves for a radical realignment that could bring liberal and conservative churches together in common social causes and lead to the disbanding of the venerable National Council of Churches. Traditionally, churches in the United States have been divided. Old-line Protestant churches, along with Anglican, Orthodox and African American denominations, have belonged to the National Council of Churches. The National Assn.

Can the level of sex and violence in the media be decreased without resorting to censorship? That is the central question being addressed by the National Council of Churches in two days of hearings this week at the Sheraton-Universal Hotel. The Los Angeles hearings are part of the "first religious national study that seriously examines problems presented by sex and violence in the media and at the same time is dedicated to preserving the constitutional freedom of speech," said the Rev. James M.

The National Council of Churches has promised Cuban President Fidel Castro renewed lobbying efforts aimed at ending longstanding U.S. embargoes against Cuba. The Rev. Joan B. Campbell, general secretary of the council, said that representatives of the ecumenical body made the pledge at a four-hour meeting with Castro earlier this month. The meeting took place during an ecumenical gathering in Cuba Dec. 9-12.

The Bible says to love thy neighbor, but it doesn't say anything about not taking thy neighbor to court. One particular case involves a Garden Grove church and a cemetery, two establishments usually thought of as working hand-in-hand. But the neighbors have had a major falling-out over a row of trees--more specifically, falling branches from 100-year-old pines along the property line.

Taking a page from President Obama's political playbook, Michele Bachmann has formally left a church in Minnesota accused of holding anti-Catholic views. According to CNN , the church that Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus had attended for more than a decade, Salem Lutheran in Stillwater, Minn., granted the couple's request to be released from their membership last month, a week after Bachmann told a national audience that she would run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Russian Orthodox bishops Monday opened a general church council to celebrate 1,000 years of Christianity in what is now the Soviet Union. The four-day council is only the third such gathering allowed in the Soviet Union since World War II. After a service sung by the monks of the Holy Trinity and St. Sergius Monastery in Zagorsk, a center of church activity 35 miles north of Moscow, the Russian primate, Patriarch Pimen, declared the council open in the monastery's baroque refectory.

A Lutheran minister from Gardena, whose arrest on sex charges has shocked many in the church and community, pleaded not guilty this week to allegations that he seduced a teen-age girl in his parish by threatening her with the wrath of God. "It's all lies," said Arleigh Eugene Cox, who resigned as pastor of St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church earlier this month after 13 years heading the small congregation.

Garden Grove officials gave a green light this week to the state's first Cao Dai church, despite residents who protested having a religious facility in their neighborhood. Council members granted a conditional use permit Tuesday for construction of a 2,150-square-foot church and a caretaker's home nearly the same size at 8791 Orangewood Ave. The facility would provide about 200 followers of the Cao Dai faith in Orange County a place to pray aside from their homes and offices.

The National Council of Churches, which has plunged into the middle of the Elian Gonzalez case, is a controversial organization that often has espoused liberal causes. Critics accuse it of having been too cozy with Marxist governments abroad.

A church day-care center won City Council approval this week to open, despite opposition from some neighbors. The council voted 4 to 1 to allow a learning and day-care center for up to 42 children at Blessed Sacrament Episcopal Church on Angelina Drive. Councilman Michael L. Maertzweiler, citing the concerns of neighbors, cast the lone dissent. In June, the city's Planning Commission approved the center. But Ed Kuehl, who lives next to the church, filed an appeal to the council.

Huddled in tents, sleeping beneath Red Cross blankets, 18 unwilling campers look like refugees from war or famine. They are asylum seekers rejected both by the Dutch government and by authorities in their homelands. Living in a legal limbo, they say they have nowhere else to go. The Dutch tradition of sheltering the needy and persecuted is being pushed down the political agenda in the Netherlands while the government concentrates on strengthening the economy.

Westlake Village City Council got an early look at Calvary Community Church's plans to relocate to the former Eaton Corp. building to accommodate the growing congregation. "We're very excited about this," Executive Pastor Bob Feitl told the council at its meeting Wednesday night. "But this is a concept plan. There's nothing concrete other than the existing concrete buildings. We're here to get feedback."

In a move toward the mainstream, the gay-oriented Metropolitan Community Church has been admitted to the Southern California Ecumenical Council, but a prominent Eastern Orthodox priest said Thursday that the action "raises troubling questions" for the Eastern churches. The council has admitted the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, which oversees 330 congregations worldwide from its new headquarters in West Hollywood and routinely performs same-sex weddings.

Three sides of an Encinitas church remain defaced with red paint, and an employee of a company that had been retained to do work at the church has been arrested in connection with the vandalism, a sheriff's investigator said. Detective Floyd Feese said William Damery, 19, of Spring Valley was arrested Thursday after a footprint found in the paint was determined to match his. Damery was booked into the County Jail in Vista on suspicion of felony vandalism exceeding $5,000.

Forrest Cleburne Weir, executive director of the Southern California Council of Churches for two decades and a former chairman of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, has died. He was 91. Weir, who lived in Pacific Palisades, died Sunday in UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital, his son, Ralph, said Thursday.

Once a week, a dome-shaped church here undergoes a magical transformation. The cross on the altar is placed in a closet. Christian hymnals disappear from the pews. And a custodian removes the New Testament Bible from the lectern under the stained-glass window. In place of these, he puts out an ark containing the Torah, Shabbat candles, a set of Jewish prayer books and hundreds of yarmulkes. Voila! The Irvine United Church of Christ has become the University Synagogue.

When he crossed into the United States over the hills of Tijuana a decade ago, Agustin Escudero didn't bring much: his family, his religious beliefs and a singular tradition that every year honors his beloved Virgin of Guadalupe. Each December, Escudero, an assembly line worker and father of five sons, creates an enormous image of Mexico's most revered religious figure on the steps of his neighborhood church.